Author of Healing Maddie Brees

Month: January 2007

“We’d like those,” we said to the salesman. “We’d like that washer and dryer, and we’d like to have them As Soon As Possible.” The salesman said that would be fine, but they no longer had them in stock. All they had was this pair, and they were the floor models and, as we could … More Saga

We were riding in the car, and Emma Grace asked me to pass the magazine back to her. It was a business magazine, but it had an image on the cover that intrigued her. “It’s an angel and a devil, Mommy,” she said to me. I could understand the angel part. In fact, I had … More At Our House

It began in December. The week of exams, maybe the week before. Whichever week it was, it was a week that was Already Loaded, such that I came home from school at the end of each day Weary To My Bones, only to have all the jobs of homemaker and mother waiting for my attention. … More In Threes

I have spent some of this day with poetry. Sometimes poetry is the Only Thing That Will Do. For part of the time, I read the poems in the silence of my room, and this was good, because poetry is something that needs to be heard, even if you don’t read it aloud. More recently, … More Poetry

We woke up this morning to the snow coming down. The children were outside in it before 9 a.m. In the beginning, school was on a two-hour delay, but it wasn’t long before it was cancelled altogether. Living in the South, where there are only three snow plows to cover three counties and, apparently, No … More Look What Happened!

Every morning on our way to school, William reads the temperature. It appears in Fahrenheit on a little digital screen just above my head and, when I push the button, it reappears in Celcius. William likes to practice the conversion in his head, then have me check to see how close he got. Of course, … More Wishful Thinking

When you are stuck in a book; when you are well into writing it, and know what comes next, and yet cannot go on; when every morning for a week or a month you enter its room and turn your back on it; then the trouble is either of two things. Either the structure has … More Gratitude